Kootenay Muster: Regenerating a Memory of Production in the Precarious Landscape of Nelson, British Columbia

Abstract

Interior British Columbian communities exist in precarious conditions considering their landscape and formalizing industries. Community abandonment is common with the instability of resource extraction leaving industrial artifacts scattered across the mountains. This thesis proposes that these artifacts can be re-imagined to act as intermediaries between urban and nature. This proposal is explored in the Interior city of Nelson. The city de-industrialized in the early 1980s with the closure of its mill site. The site became derelict and overgrown with the only remaining artifact, a steel pier, extending into the West Arm of Kootenay Lake. The site’s collective memory and positioning is utilized as the foundation for a symbolic community muster point, as the city lacks a physical space on its waterfront. Using methods of site consideration, affordances, essence of comfort and framed views, the community is launched back into its waterway reconnecting a historic network of production through the mill site.